FULTON – The Fulton City School District Board of Education met in-person and virtually last night, Tuesday, March 22, and discussed the Read to Them program.
During the Superintendent’s Report, Brian Pulvino talked about Music in our Schools Month, which goes through March. The board then moved locations to listen to a group of student performers.
Director of Literacy and UPK Renee Hendrickson, Instructional Coach Michelle Briggs, and NYS Representative for Read to Them Mary Curcio, then presented on the Read to Them program, a not-for-profit that encourages creating a culture of literacy at home.
This is the third year Fulton is taking part in the program. In this program, the whole Pre-K through Grade 6 community reads the same book with the same reading schedule, set up by the district. Read to Them provides the materials for the students and schools.
Beginning at Parent University this past weekend, the students are voting on a choice of four books that the community will read. The students not only read the book, but they explore other materials to engage them and help them to better understand it.
The four books on the ballot are: “The Wild Robot” by Peter Brown, “Saving Winslow” by Sharon Creech, “Nim’s Island” by Wendy Orr, and “A Boy Called Bat” by Elana K. Arnold. To read an overview of each, see here. Voting ends Friday, March 25.
Curcio said the pandemic took a toll on children’s learning how to read, and found that parents were more engaged when a district provided a lot of good materials. The grant for the program to come to Fulton, Reading Regression Recovery, is meant to help with this.
More information on the Read to Them program can be found here.
Next, the superintendent presented the proposed instructional calendar (provided at bottom) for the 2022-2023 school year. First day of classes for the new year will be Wednesday, September 7. The calendar was approved by the board.
He also gave an update to the budget. For the period ending February 28, 2022, the district budget has an ending fund balance of $16,566,464. Last year, the same period had an ending fund balance of $15,405,496. The numbers mostly line up with last year’s numbers. The February financial summary can be found here.
Pulvino gave an overview of the district’s fund balance and reserves. On June 30, 2019, the total fund balance totaled $11,080,020, on June 30, 2020, it totaled $12,290,023, and on June 30, 2021, it totaled $14,856,001. Pulvino said the district projects on June 30 of this year, it will total $15,137,299.
More information on the budget can be found here.
The board then moved on to approving almost all items on the agenda.
Items 7.13 “Appoint Deputy Superintendent” and 7.14 “Appoint Chief of Operations and Finance” were tabled for the next board meeting.
Pulvino said the purpose of the restructuring of some district positions, which was presented at the March 8 meeting, is to better align with the district’s strategic coherence plan; these positions are already doing these jobs, and their titles will better match what they do.
The full meeting video can be viewed here.
